Monthly Archives: February 2013

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This weekend was Purim, a Jewish holiday that I knew existed, but really didn’t know about at all. I still don’t know a ton about it, but I at least know a bit more. My mom taught me a song when I was younger about Haman, but I never put it together that hamantaschen were made to celebrate Haman’s failed plot for Purim!

This weekend, I attempted to make hamantaschen, and while they taste very yummy, I don’t think I can call them hamantaschen. They are more just like little round cakes. I pinched together the ends of them, and they went into the oven in the traditional triangle shape, but ended up cooking spread out and circular in the oven 😦

I figure I need to try out hamantaschen with friends who have actually made them before, and maybe there’s a technique I can learn to successfully get the triangle shape to stay. I ended up somewhat giving up when the dough was used up enough and made some sheep cut-out shapes instead!

I also think an issue was the recipe I used. I like flipped out when I saw Buzzfeed’s article with a bunch of different types of hamantaschen, and I decided I wanted to make chocolate hamantaschen with the Chocolate Mint recipe I found in the article.

The recipe is originally for cookies, and I think that’s why it ended up failing. I think the recipe also requires a standing mixer. The only wet ingredients were butter and sugar, so the dough ended up very crumbly as I added more and more flour. I ended up putting an egg in, which I think made the dough come out much better. I also don’t have a rolling pin, so I used a glass for this on a cutting board. I think a larger, prettier kitchen and more tools/experience will help in the future. But it was fun and the little cakes are very fudgy and chocolately wonderfulness! Now I just have to figure out what to do with all of them…

Let’s see if I can jump back on this! I’ve made a lot of the recipes listed originally here by now, and I’ve made comments for myself on which to try again, what to do differently, and removed those that I didn’t like. But it would be kind of fun to start logging the adventure part of it again.

So, this weekend I made dairy free and gluten free chunky chocolate chip cookies, adapted from “eat, live, run” ‘s recipe, here. I actually ended up changing it a bit by general purpose GF flour (Bob’s Red Mill), light brown sugar, a mixture of maple syrup and honey, a mixture of coconut and canola oils, crunchy peanut butter and carob chips. They taste really great, but could probably have used more peanut butter or maybe honey for a binding source.

Here are some pictures- yes I still do not have a good kitchen for photography, proper lighting or the camera/camera skills to take worthy photos!

I would definitely try these out again.

Aside from the cookies, I made Chloe Coscarelli’s Mexicali Sliders. I have made these before. This time I was not prepared…I thought I was…and they turned out tasting great, but the ingredients refused to come together to form patties. So it’s more like i sauteed a bunch of beans and veggies together and poured them on top of a bun. Still tasty though. A few things went wrong in that I thought I had canned black beans (I had dry). I tried to quick soak them along with some kidney beans, which probably didn’t work and then tried to cook them. By the time they were done cooking the overhead light in my kitchen decided to die out, so I grabbed my lantern and cooked by lantern-light! And this probably also contributed to my dinner fail.

But it’s good to be back, and hopefully I’ll jump back in and keep things rolling!